Southeast Denver’s still-tight market for office space and looser investor purse strings have helped draw Goldman Sachs to a project with light-rail at its doorstep.

The New York investment bank will take a majority share in One Belleview Station, an office building expected to break ground in December, said Steve Clarke, chief executive of developer Prime West.

Clarke wouldn’t say what portion of the project Goldman will own when the contract is signed next week.

When it opens in April 2016, the $90 million building, part of the master-planned Belleview Station transit-oriented development, will feature 290,000 square feet of class A office space. The project is near the Belleview light-rail station, near the intersection of East Belleview Avenue and Interstate 25.

The deal was spurred by a supply imbalance and an increased willingness by investors to take a risk on speculative projects, Clarke said. The project has drawn plenty of interest from tenants, he said, but no leases have been signed.

Movement on the commercial real estate market has been slow throughout Denver so far this year, said Mandy Seyfried, an analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle, but it’s likely to improve as new developments open up bigger blocks of available space.

Leasing activity has slowed in the southeastern suburbs, but the areas remain “perhaps the most active area” in metro Denver, Jones Lang LaSalle said in a report.

In the second quarter, the southeastern suburbs reported a vacancy rate of 11 percent for class A office space, compared with 13 percent in downtown Denver. Leases averaged $26.02 per square foot in the southeast, up from 13.3 percent in second quarter of 2013 and increasing at a quicker pace than downtown.

One Belleview Station, which plans to charge $23.50 to $25 per square foot, also falls into a trend toward development along light-rail corridors.

Those developments have commanded higher rents and gone off the market faster, Clarke said. Plus, Seyfried said, they tend to have lower vacancy rates.

A study released last month predicted that Denver will become one of the nation’s most walkable metro areas, largely because of development near light rail.

The study, conducted by George Washington University researchers, found that companies pay a 44 percent premium for real estate in walkable areas.

That number is on the rise, marking pent-up demand for such space, the researchers said. Developing office space in those areas and with transit access is increasingly necessary as companies look to hire millennials, Clarke said.

Without them, Clarke said, “you will have a difficult time attracting today’s tenants because they want those amenities for their employees.”

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